Principles
by Septdeneuf
Summary: Lucy has always thought of her stellar spirits as friends, equals. When she's called to investigate a crime involving a spirit, she has to face the fact that this is not what most people think. And the consequences that has for the spirits...


"Morning Mira", Lucy said as she plopped down in front of the bar. "Could I get an orange juice, please?"

"Sure", the chipper barmaid replied, digging out the glass. "You're just the person I've been looking for, actually, Lucy. I got an assignment in for you."

"For me? You mean one that's good for our team?", Lucy asked with a hint of doubt in her voice.

"No for you, specifically", Mira replied with a smile.

"Really? Someone asked for me?" At that Lucy couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice. Requests that were specific to one person were few, but usually quite lucrative. She'd actually accompanied her team on a few missions that specifically asked for Fairy Tail's Salamander or Titania. Those had all turned out not to actually require them specifically, but apparently the costumers had wanted to have big names working for them, for appearance's sake.

And now she had gotten one. While Gray still hadn't. He was gonna be pissed.

"Well, they wanted a celestial spirit mage, and since you're the best one we have…" Mira said as she poured Lucy's juice.

"Only one we have", Lucy corrected. So not quite someone looking for the supreme package of awesomeness that was Lucy Heartfilia…

"I like it better the way I said it", Mira said with a grin. "And besides, don't sell yourself short, with how many keys you have you're right up there with the best of your persuasion." Lucy blushed a little at that, but for once didn't correct the praise. Ten of the twelve unique Zodiac keys was definitely something to be proud of.

"Well, what's the mission?"

"Well apparently it's a criminal investigation. They didn't want to give out a lot of details, but it looks as though a spirit witnessed a crime, but they haven't been able to get it to talk. They're hoping a spirit mage will have better luck finding out what happened. And the pay is going to be 200,000 jewels."

At that Lucy immediately piped up. "200,000? That's almost three months' rent!", she said excitedly.

"Lucy, I've been meaning to ask, do you really have that much trouble getting your rent money together? It sounds a little worrying", Mira said, a small crease forming between her eyebrows.

"Well", Lucy started and looked sideways to the floor self consciously. "I've actually always managed to pay on time, even though a few times it looked like I wouldn't be able to… it's just… Growing up I never had to think about money. It was never something I paid any attention to before I ran away, and now I'm a little scared that I might fall back into that mindset if I'm not careful and jut forget about paying and then I'll be on the street. So that's why I obsess about it so much."

"That makes sense", Mira laughed. "But maybe you should worry about it a little less."

"I know. My team always jokes that we only work for my rent money, completely forgetting the fact that Erza's rent almost six times as much as mine." Lucy let out a sigh and took a sip from her juice.

"So do you want to take the assignment? They want you there as soon as possible", Mira said.

"Yeah I'll take it. Doing something I like to do anyway and getting paid for it, what's not to love?"

Sitting in the train to Era on her own felt a little weird to Lucy. It was strange but it was almost as if she was missing Natsu's groaning and near puking next to her, which to be honest really wasn't his most charming quality.

She'd left the guild soon after accepting the assignment, and had gone home to pack her bags, eager to get there as soon as possible. She'd met Happy and Natsu on the way, and they'd both wanted to accompany her, and it took quite a lot of explaining to convince them that this wasn't an assignment where they could be helpful, and she really doubted they'd be to happy sitting around watching her talk to someone, assuming they'd even be permitted to watch.

They'd grudgingly conceded her point, and Lucy had hurried to get all her stuff and into the train.

The train was an express and they were due to arrive in Era around midday. Lucy was actually pretty excited to go there, the seat of the magic council, because she'd never been there before. There were supposed to be some truly impressive buildings there, and some of the most influential mages of the country lived and worked there.

When the conductor announced that they'd be arriving in a few minutes Lucy checked her appearance again for what seemed to be the millionth time. She wanted to look professional and had decided on a pencil skirt and matching blazer. She'd pulled her hair up in a loose bun and debated the merit of putting on her fast reading glasses to look smarter, but had decided against it. If she needed to read something quickly, she still had them in her back, and she didn't want to overdo it.

The train stopped and she got out into the huge main hall of the train station. It was quite a lot bigger than Magnolia's but what delighted her more was to find a chauffeur holding up a sign with her name on it. Getting hired by the official department of justice apparently had its perks.

During the entire ride through town Lucy had her eyes glued out of the windows, trying to see everything at once. It didn't look that much different from Magnolia, really, except maybe a little more tidy and especially bigger houses. They didn't pass the new magic council, which Lucy was a little disappointed by.

But then again, she still thought it was silly they had even built a new one. Getting new members after the whole Etherion fiasco seemed sensible, and it made sense that they wanted to set themselves apart from the old one, but building a new meeting hall which was both expensive and a lot less practical than the old one seemed pretty excessive.

But it also meant that the old council building was now open for other uses, and the Department of Justice had swept right in and claimed it for themselves, which meant that Lucy was going to be working in there for the next two weeks (according to the time estimate in the contract, anyway).

She got out of the cab and thanked the driver, before spending a moment just staring up at the majestic building. It was bigger than she'd expected and quite awe inspiring. For years, long before she'd been born this had been the most important place for the magical community of Fiore. All the big decisions had been made here, lots of which had already found their way into history books.

Of course, staring up at the building didn't look too professional, so she quickly looked back towards the entrance and did her best to look as if she had a purpose going there, doing her best to downplay the elated feeling she had going into such an important place.

The entrance hall was pleasantly cool and the natural light flooding it made it look very inviting. Lucy went to the reception desk and was greeted by a smiling brunette.

"Department of Justice, how can I help you?"

"Hello, I'm Lucy Hertfilia from the mages guild Fairy Tail. I'm here to consult on a case." She really hoped her introduction didn't sound too rehearsed, but she'd been thinking about what best to say for the better part of the train ride.

"Ah yes, you're being expected. Just a moment please", she said, getting something out from a drawer. It was a device that looked quite complicated, with a lacrima crystal in front, encased in a box that also contained several spinning cogs and weels. "Look into this end, please", the receptionist said, pointing at the Lacrima. Lucy smiled slightly as she looked into it, and a moment later a small white card dropped from the other end.

"Here's your authorization pass", the woman explained, handing it to her. "It's good for one month, if the investigation goes any longer, just come back here to get it renewed. Now, you need to go to the third floor and ask for Mr. Brightman. He's already expecting you."

Thanking the woman, Lucy went towards the elevators and looked at the card she'd been given. It had her face on it, the picture better than Lucy would've expected, and said 'consultant'. Hopefully she could keep it after the assignment as a souvenir. Clipping it to her blazer she felt incredibly important.

She pressed the button and almost immediately the doors opened. The elevators all had a Lacrima underneath them which transported them up and down with basic flying magic. This building had been the first to have them, but by now there were buildings which had them in several of Fiore's larger cities, even though Lucy didn't know of any example in Magnolia.

As she rode up feeling the odd sense of movement for the first time, she wondered if Natsu would be able to ride in these, or if he'd forever be condemned to using stairs. Probably the latter.

She got out at the third floor, which seemed to bustling with activity, several people running around, many of them with documents in their hands and all of them looking important.

Lucy stopped a man who looked to be in his mid twenties. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Mister Brightman", she said.

"Well, then you're in luck, because you've found him", he said with a grin and turned to her. She was surprised for a moment. She'd honestly been expecting someone older, but she couldn't complain. With his light brown hair and open face he was actually not unattractive. "You must be the mage from Fairy Tail, right?" He held out his hand for her to shake, and she gladly took it.

"Exactly, I'm Lucy Heartfilia. Nice to meet you, Mr. Brightman.", she said with a smile.

"Pleasure's all mine. Please, call me Josh."

"Only if you call me Lucy. So you're in charge of the investigation?", Lucy inquired.

"Exactly. I'm the DA on this case. I really hope you're able to help us, but my research indicates that you're probably one of the best mages to deal with stellar spirits there is. Is it true you managed to win a battle just by talking to your opponent's spirits?" he asked with genuine interest. Lucy felt herself blush a little at the praise.

"Well, not just by talking. But it did help", Lucy said, secretly wondering how he even knew about her battle with Angel. Then again, she had probably been taken into custody as well, and if there was an investigation there, talking Gemini into changing sides would've come up. "And you? Are you a magician, too?"

"No, some of my friends got me a tie that can change colors, but that's about all I have to do with magic. It's actually rare that we deal with anything magical in this department, but we'd already been assigned this case before they found out about the spirit."

"Right, how is the spirit even involved?", Lucy wanted to know. Josh had started walking down one of the corridors, and Lucy kept pace with him, dimly aware of the fact that she probably wouldn't be able to find the way on her own again.

"Well, it was found at the crime scene, and it looks as though it saw what happened, but is too traumatized to talk about it", Josh explained.

"Is it a boy or a girl?", Lucy asked.

"Um… female, I think", Josh said, blinking at the question.

"Then you should call her she", Lucy said. Arriving at her assignment and immediately starting to correct the way people talk probably wasn't the best way to be introducing herself, but something about hearing him say 'it' just rubbed her the wrong way.

"Right… Well if it saw something then it could be the crucial piece of evidence", he went on.

"She's a potential witness, not a piece of evidence." Lucy was probably not making herself popular around here.

"Yes, sorry. I just heard that stellar mages call them their tools, so that's why…"

"Well I don't and that's part of the reason I get along with them so well, which is why you hired me", Lucy said tersely.

"Right…" for a moment the awkwardness in the air was almost palpable.

"So, what's the crime, anyway, what did she see?", Lucy asked, hoping to dispel the mood a little.

"We don't know what she saw, we're hoping you can help us with that. I thought maybe you could go in and talk to her first, get some impressions, unbiased." He gestured towards a door not far from them. "It's through there."

Lucy didn't really know what to make of the whole 'unbiased' thing. She wasn't stupid, even if she knew what they were looking for, she'd be able to talk to the spirit properly. But it was probably best to stop being difficult for now and go along with his plan.

"Which spirit is it, anyway?", Lucy wanted to know.

"Uh…", Josh said, looking at one of the documents he was carrying. "Its name is… Libra", he declared when he finally found what he'd been looking for. _Libra_, Lucy thought. One of the twelve unique Zodiac spirits. That, she honestly hadn't expected. There were stellar mages who went their entire career only with silver keys, never even meeting the unique golden keyed spirits. And here she was, meeting the eleventh one.

They made their way to a smaller side hallway, and Josh held the door open for her. They entered a small dark room with a glass wall. Behind it there was a better lit room which held a table and two chairs and was otherwise devoid of furniture.

On the chair facing the glass a girl was sitting. She had her blond hair in pigtails, blue eyes staring down. Two golden plates were placed on the table in front of her, and Lucy immediately got the impression that they weren't there for nourishment but were part of Libra's attire. Weighing scales.

"We can hear you from in here, but you can't see us from the inside", Josh explained, sitting down in the small room next to a woman who hadn't introduced herself but was probably a colleague of his. "You go through that door over there", he said, pointing it out.

"Okay. So, anything more specific you want me to ask her?", Lucy asked.

"Not right now. We suspect it's going to take several sessions before she'll open up to you. We haven't even been able to get her to speak at all, so if you manage that, that'd be great."

Lucy nodded and then pushed the door open. She didn't quite like the room, maybe because it was too bare, but she pushed that thought aside. Libra hadn't reacted at all to her presence, even as Lucy sat down in front of her the spirit kept staring at the table.

"Hello. I'm Lucy", she said in a friendly tone. Libra looked up for a brief moment, but then averted her gaze again. She was pretty, and her dress that had a dividing line in the middle, separating it into a blue and an orange part, looked fun, but the empty look she had on her face ruined the impression. "You're Libra, right?"

No reaction. "I just want to talk to you." Again, nothing. "They said you saw something. Can you tell me what?" The shake of her head was barely visible. "Why not?" No reaction.

"Look, I don't know what it is, or why you don't want to talk about it, but I do know that staying here for too long isn't good for you. I really don't want you to hurt because you have to stay here. But we really need your help."

"I'm helping", Libra said quietly without looking up.

"So you'll tell me?", Lucy tried. Again, Libra didn't answer. "Maybe you want to talk about something else, then? To get your mind off of it?"

Finally Libra looked up again, puzzlement evident in her features. "Like what?"

"I don't know, Something you like."

"I like what my master likes", Libra said and looked back down to the table.

"Really?", Lucy asked, thinking of her spirits. "I mean, you only have an owner for a short amount of time, you know, compared to how old you guys are. You can't change your interests every time you make a new contract, can you?"

But apparently Libra was done talking. She kept staring at the table without any reaction.

"You know, I'm a stellar spirit mage myself, and the spirits I know all have their own interests", Lucy tried. She wasn't sure if she should reveal that she was a spirit mage, because not all spirits had good impressions of their owners, thanks to people like Karen and Angel, but then again, hiding it was probably an even worse idea. "I could summon one of my friends. Maybe you'd prefer talking to them?"

Libra's eyebrows clinched closer together when Lucy said the word 'friends' but she didn't answer.

The door opened just then, before Lucy could come up with another strategy. Josh beckoned for her.

"I have to go, Libra", Lucy said, waiting for any sort of reaction as she got up. "Bye", she added and then left the room, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Whatever she'd thought this mission was going to be, somehow this wasn't it.

"So, what's your impression?", Josh asked as he ha closed the door behind her.

"Well, she's extremely shy and subdued. I don't know why, but I got the impression she's scared of something." She followed him back into the hallway, which had large windows and was filled with beautiful afternoon light, quite the contrast to the small and somewhat gloomy room she'd been in.

"Are they usually like that?", Josh asked.

"No, not at all. Most of them have really quirky personalities, and they're usually a lot of fun to talk to" _With the exception of Aquarius, _she added mentally. "They usually have so much energy, and she's just… whatever she saw, it must've been bad."

She didn't want to talk about it front of a stranger, but she had to think of Loke, just when he'd been about to fade away into nothingness. Even as he was begging her not too use too much of her power to try and save him he hadn't given of this feeling she'd sensed with Libra. Of having given up.

"Well, let's hope you'll find out", Josh said. He stopped, and turned to look at her. "Listen, I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot, here. I really don't know anything about spirits, I hadn't heard much about him before this case and i—she's the first one I've met. I really didn't mean to be insensitive. I'm willing to learn." He had a hopeful little smile playing around the edges of his mouth, one asking if maybe she'd be the one to teach him.

Maybe she would. "Well, I'm sorry, too", she amended. "I'm around other mages so much that it's hard for me to remember sometimes that most people never really deal with this sort of thing. But on the other hand I'm completely clueless about laws and all the things you guys do in the Department of Justice, so…"

"Well, then I guess we can both learn something from the other", he agreed with a cute little smile that Lucy wouldn't mind seeing again, sometime.

She was supposed to talk to Libra again the next day, and in the meantime they were putting her up in a nice hotel not far from the Department of Justice. Josh had offered to get a driver to bring her there, but she'd declined. Getting driven everywhere and never really seeing the places you were was something that reminded Lucy just a bit too much of her life before she'd run away from the Heartfilia estate and joined Fairy Tail.

So instead she got directions and walked the way, enjoying the atmosphere of the city while looking at it. It really did feel different from Magnolia. Most people walked with a sense of purpose that made it seem as though whatever they were doing was incredibly important, and there were a lot more people on the streets than you'd find in Magnolia this time of day.

She passed several people taking coffee cups with them, and Lucy resolved to do that one of the next days, too. Walking around with your coffee gave the impression that you were too busy being important to have time to sit down to enjoy your beverage, and the Fairy Tail mage wanted to feel like that for once, too.

The hotel was easy to find and looked much nicer than she'd been expecting. Usually when they were on missions and couldn't just camp outside (which Natsu always voted for) they went to tiny cheap hotels so as not to waste any of their reward money on accommodations, sometimes all four of them sharing a room, which lead to Gray and Natsu fighting about the couch while Erza declared that she and Lucy could just share the bed. Lucy never slept well under those conditions because she was so afraid to accidentally move and hit Erza or something that she barely got any shut eye. Of course Erza _probably _wouldn't do anything bad to her if that happened, but Lucy had really never felt the need to try, thank you very much.

"Hi, I'm Lucy Hertfilia from Fairy Tail, I was told you'd have a room for me?", Lucy told the receptionist who proceeded to rifle through her files, grab for a key and make small talk with Lucy about the weather all at the same time. There was possibly some magic involved, but Lucy wasn't quite sure.

"Ah, here we go, Suite 309", the receptionist said, handing Lucy the key.

"Suite? Um… how much is that gonna cost?" she probably sounded like a poor little girl who'd never been in a hotel before, but the word suite immediately filled her head with visions of all her jewels growing wings and flying away.

"It's already paid for for two weeks by the Department of Justice, don't worry about it", the receptionist said with a warm smile, and then continued to explain the way to get to the room.

Lucy found the room easily and pushed the door open. And was pretty sure that she'd have to pick up her jaw from the ground because of how far it had dropped. The room was bigger than her entire apartment, and it had doors leading to several more rooms. She had a separate living room in her hotel room for crying out loud.

"Hey there", a voice greeted her, only to be met with a shriek and Lucy almost dropping her key. She didn't though, because even though it was just a regular key for a regular door she now had ingrained into her brain never to loose a key.

As she turned around to see who had spoken, she realized that it was probably a testament to how weird her life had become when she saw a half naked man who shouldn't even be in this town stroll through her hotel room like nothing was wrong, and the fact that he was half naked was really the least surprising.

"Gray! What on earth are you doing here?"

"Uh… you, know, stealing soap, weighing the pros and cons of raiding the minibar… Hotel room stuff", he explained, scratching the back of his head.

"No, I mean what are you doing in Era and why are you in my hotel room?"

Just as she asked that, a figure clad in a white terrycloth bathrobe strolled out of another door. "This is really fluffy. Is that what it feels like to have fur?" The blue feline following him looked a little sad as it answered, "I don't know, they don't have one in my size so I can't check."

"Natsu? Happy?", Lucy shrieked.

"Oh, hey Luce", Natsu greeted. "How's your mission?"

"Nevermind that, why are you all here?"

"Well, it was Natsu's idea." Lucy turned around to see that Erza had shown up as well. Really, with Grey Natsu and Happy here it would've been more surprising if she hadn't.

"Yeah, you said we couldn't help you on your mission, so we decided to get our own. We all got some solo missions around Era, and starting tomorrow it's a contest who can finish theirs first", Natsu explained.

"No fair, mine's a three day one, I can't do anything about that", Happy complained.

"Wait, you have a solo mission?"

"Aye! Express package delivery!", the little blue cat declared proudly with one fist raised in the air.

"See, this way we're not getting in the way of your mission, but you don't have to stay in a strange town all alone for two weeks", Natsu said with one of his trademark grins.

"That's… actually a pretty good idea", Lucy said, impressed.

"Yes, we were all as shocked as you", Gray said with a smirk.

"What was that?", Natsu shouted.

"Hey!", Lucy interjected, before one of their usual fights broke out. "If you break any of the furniture I will hold you personally responsible", she said, matching the statement with her best glare. It wasn't anywhere near Erza level, but it did stop the two of them from fighting. Possibly because Erza was nodding in agreement, but Lucy liked to think her own superb intimidation skills were at play here.

So, her friends here, a great hotel room paid for by her employer and a city she was really starting to like waiting to be explored. It sounded like the perfect assignment.

Now if only she could make that sinking feeling in her stomach about the assignment itself go away…

A/N: What is it about this fandom? I basically just started getting into it and I keep getting ideas for really long stories that won't leave me alone. Well, guess a lot of writing needs to be done, then.

Anyway, this is just sort of an introductory chapter to set the scene, the stories going to be picking up after this. Tell me what you think!


End file.
